# The Last Billboard

40°27′37″N 79°55′31″W﻿ / ﻿40.46038°N 79.92516°W﻿ / 40.46038; -79.92516The Last Billboard was a public art billboard curated by Jon Rubin in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Located at the intersection of Highland Avenue and Baum Boulevard in the East Liberty neighborhood, above what was originally the building for Waffle Shop: A Reality Show—a restaurant that was also conceptualized by Rubin—the art piece consisted of a 12-feet-by-36-feet steel frame billboard on which letters were arranged by hand. Each month, different artists were solicited to place a message on the billboard.

## Schedule of guest artists
### 2013

| Months | Artist | Message |
| January | Packard Jennings | these words hold / no power over you |
| March | Michael Crowe | intellect versus emotion / intellect wins / emotion starts crying |
| May | Anthony Discenza | think game of thrones / meets okcupid meets car / talk meets gertrude stein / meet duran duran |
| June | Maude Liotta | questions for my new blog: / who invented tape, / how were feelings discovered, / when did "skinny" become / fashionable. |
| July | Nina Katchadourian | the person standing / beside you, pointing at this / billboard, has brought you / here because it was too hard / to say "I am sorry" out loud. |
| August | Marc Horowitz | ? / (323) 541 6361 |
| November | Joshua Beckman | poem 206 427 7792 |

### 2014

| Months | Author | Message |
| January | Matt Shain | photo / food / beauty / liquor / rx |
| April | Charlie Humphrey | i wonder some days / if facebook isn't a broad / all encompassing / cry for help |
| May | Adam Frelin | let's put loudspeakers / on the roofs of hospitals // let's announce births / and deaths as they occur |
| June | Lenka Clayton | think about / all the hours / forgotten plays / were rehearsed |
| September | The Janks Archive | you're so ugly that / you should be in a / museum of modern art |
| December | Jason Fulford | S A T O R / A R E P O / T E N E T / O P E R A / R O T A |

### 2015

| Months | Artist | Message |
| January - March | Kim Beck | today only / last chance! final day! / nothing held back / closing forever! |
| April | Sarah Keeling | ford & daughter / used tires / 704-370-3793 (varied by day) |
| May | Pablo Helguera | anulala a la luna |
| June | Milena Bonilla | the whole town's sleeping |
| July | Paul Ramirez Jonas | a i a / sky you sea / cloud crowd brook / hilltop company rivulet / highpoint multitude tributary |
| August | Taylor Shields | spry texts keep ducking up / ducking / duck / duck / nevermind |
| October | Jonn Herschend | close your eyes / and imagine that / i'm dancing so crazy fast |

### 2016

| Months | Artist | Message |
| February | Jim Christensen | anything / but / this |
| April | Lenka Clayton | tragically, / the world's oldest person / keeps dying. |
| June | John Riegert | just saw a hipster with / big headphones on top of / a knit cap, wearing a coat / i had worn for 20 years / and gave to goodwill. |
| July | David Horvitz | rachel carson / is my hero |
| October | Micah Lexier | a. f. k. / b. g. / c. h. / d. i. / e. j. |
| August | Neil Farber and Michael Dumontier | you don't have to / open every door. / a door labelled hell, / for instance. |

### 2017

| Months | Artist | Message |
| March | Jon Rubin | a man whose daily work / is rewriting history / tries to rebel / by falling in love |
| May | Eric Gottesman | do not react to this. |
| June | Joseph Del Pesco | you don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows (following Part 1, a poem from Eugen Gomringer's book CONSTELLATIONS) |
| July | Tamara Shopsin | a tow truck / pulling / an ambulance |
| September | Brett Yasko | . / . / . . / . / . . / . / . / . |
| November | Laure Prouvost | ideally everything / will turn quiet / now |

### 2018

| Months | Artist | Message |
| March | Alisha Wormsley | there / are / black people / in the / future |

## Controversy

In March 2018, The Last Billboard's landlord, We Do Property, in response to complaints from community members who felt the sign was racist, removed Alisha Wormsley's text from the billboard. Jon Rubin, the billboard's founder and creator, responded in a statement in response to the removal:
   I believe in the power, poetry, and relevance of Alisha’s text and see absolutely no reason it should have been taken down. I find it tragically ironic, given East Liberty’s history and recent gentrification, that a text by an African American artist affirming a place in the future for black people is seen as unacceptable in the present.
A public panel discussion about the text and its removal was hosted by the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in April or May 2018.
In April of 2018, The Last Billboard was removed.

## Early billboard messages

From mid-2009 to late 2012, while Waffle Shop was still operating, the billboard included content proposed and submitted by artists and regular people. Unlike the version of the billboard from 2013 onward, this early version switched out messages several times a month. Below is an in-depth, but not comprehensive, list of those messages.

### 2009

| Months | Contributor | Message |
| May | Lenka Clayton | number of people who have / looked at this sign: / 55 (as it suggest, the number was updated manually when people looked at it) |

### 2010

| Months | Contributor | Message |
| February | Anonymous | community amateur radio / all weekend long / in our bathroom / inquire within / kf7nse |
| April | Anonymous ten-year-old boy | people think i'm a ghost. / i don't know, it's really / hard to tell. i'm kind of / like a ghost, and i might be invisible. |
| July | T. Foley | the airspace is public / property for the purposes / of sonic transmission. |
| July | Waffle Shop | things we need at the waffle shop / 1. a beautiful leafy plant / 2. three talk show hosts / 3. $75,000 / 4. a few 60 watt lightbulbs |
| August | Waffle Shop | things we need at the waffle shop / 1. a mostly leafy plant! / 2. one talk show host / $71,743 / 4. a new tv show idea |
| October | Waffle Shop | things we need at waffle shop / 1. a magician / 2. one talk show host / 3. animal masks / 4. a zookeeper |

### 2011

| Months | Contributor | Message |
| March | Steve Lambert | it's time to fight! / and / it's time to stop fighting! |
| March | Anonymous | is night worth preserving / or is it too much to ask / a void to fill a light / let the vacuum of / a lightbulb answer |
| May | Anonymous | global vegan waffle party / be kind / be healthy / redd up our planet n'at |
| June | Anonymous | capitalism / is / over! // if you want it |
| June | Anonymous | tell me who / your friend is / and i can tell you who / you are not! / ferhat ozgur |
| July | Anonymous | i was hoping / you might be interested, / but didn't know how to ask. |
| July | Anonymous | bring home the / international / space station |
| August | Anthony Discenza | we've tried everything |
| August | Anonymous | because we are / playthings of the gods, / playing is the most serious / of our activities |
| September | Anonymous | you may leave the 'burgh / but the 'burgh will never / leave you. / farewell justin & kristy! |
| November | Black Male Leadership Development Institute (BMLDI) | attention boosters! / athletes are paid to play / but will you pay academics / to learn |
| November | Anonymous | pokarekare ana / nga wai o waiapu, / whiti atu koe hine / marino ana e. (lyrics from "Pokarekare Ana", a traditional New Zealand love song) |
| November | Anonymous | empty every night. |
| December | Anonymous | facebook / hides in plain sight / nick yetsco state, / you cannot understand / unless you are in spy club. |
| December | Anonymous | shatter the chariots of kings |

### 2012

| Months | Contributor | Message |
| January | Anonymous | capturing adolf eichmann / is one thing. / freeing people's minds / so there are no more like / him is quite another |
| February | Anonymous | contendo ad astra |
| February | Anonymous | grow wilder |
| March | Kari Marboe | i love you is such an / enormous gift that i need / to house it here for a / week so that we can / use the apartment. |
| April | Lautanen | fate / (making connections / where there are / no connections) / you are mine |
| April | Anonymous | "like a tragic comedy, the u.s. / gov's actions have actually / helped the iranian gov / hurt the people of iran" / iranian american |
| May | Anonymous | love come / save me / may 28 2011 |
| May | Anonymous | we offer / complete detachment / from all your / material needs |
| | Anonymous | nature will regulate us. |